Thursday, May 4, 2017

Adoption: The only option for low income women under the Republican agenda

Republicans celebrate House passage of AHCA,
Or, a bunch of white guys smirking that they can
take away health care and facilitate adoptions..

To 217 House Republicans, choice for low income women means abstaining from sex or losing their children to adoption. By a four vote margin, the House passed the American Health Care Act. Twenty Republicans and all 193 Democrats voted against this draconian measure. The AHCA caps Medicaid funds to the states, which will result in doctors cutting or denying services to low-income pregnant women. The AHCA allows states to permit insurance companies to exclude maternity benefits from their policies and deny coverage for "pre-existing conditions" including pregnancy. Pregnancy is a voluntary condition

Jane

I had hoped we were long past the time when "being in the family way" was a "voluntary condition" which women alone were responsible for. When I was pregnant with my youngest daughter Julie in 1977, my employer, the State of Oregon, allowed insurance companies to pay less for maternity care than for other services. Feminist legislators introduced a bill requiring maternity care to be treated like any other medical condition. As I was waiting to testify for the bill, the lobbyist for Blue Cross sneered, "Let's face it. It's not our fault you got knocked up." I have to wonder how he would have felt if someone had said the same thing to his mother when she was carrying him. Sadly, Republicans have not moved past this thinking or, more likely, value campaign donations from the insurance industry over the health of mothers and children.

No contraception; no abortions
The House also voted to defund Planned Parenthood, reducing low income women's access to birth
control. Anticipating the vote at an anti-abortion rally Wednesday night Vice-president Mike Pence said "When this bill passes, it will be one of the defining victories for life," ignoring the fact that federal funds have not been used for abortion for the past 50 years. By eliminating funds for for PAP smears, and sexually transmitted infections as well as birth control, the bill strikes me as pro-death.

If the AHCA becomes law, the inevitable result will be new mothers suffering from postpartum infections, babies born with conditions which would have been easily corrected if their mothers had had prenatal care, and an increase in infant adoptions. Before Medicaid became available in 1966, a motivating factor for mothers to give up their babies was that they could not afford maternity care. Prospective adoptive parents paid the expenses for "their" mothers.

By last count, seven states (KY, MO, MS, ND, SD, WV, WY) have only one abortion provider in the entire state. Women are once again resorting to self-abort with hangers and whatever they think might induce an abortion. Back alley and self-induced abortions will continue to rise, since safe and legal abortions will continue to become increasing difficult to get; Women will die once again from unsafe abortions.

Unprecedented in the Western world
I doubt that anyone could cite a worse law anywhere in the Western World than the AHCA. In New Zealand which I visited in April, maternity care is absolutely free for all mothers. Unlike the Congressional Republicans, the Kiwis place value on having healthy mothers and children. Maternity care is provided by mid-wive or specialist doctors. Mothers choose their own practitioner. They call their midwife or doctor when they go into labor, and the doctor or midwife meets them at the hospital. They receive services for seven weeks after birth or longer if need be. NZ provides extra help to young pregnant women, including assistance to continue their education.

The one ray of hope is that Senate Republicans may not fall in line. Let us hope that at least three of of the 52 have the good sense to put the health of mothers and children before the demands of the wealthy and the warped values of those who want to turn the clock back to the 1950's and will stop this dangerous-to-women legislation. I urge our readers to contact their Senators now to stop it. https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/--jane

15 comments
:

We would be going back to the situation I found myself in in 2011, if this passes, when I learned my private insurance policy with a $10k deductible didn't cover maternity because they started denying my pre-natal visit claims, which subsequently began the panic which led to my hysteria and ended with the unnecessary adoption of my son.This is a nightmare.

I learned this morning my daughter's epilepsy would not be covered, as that is a pre-existing condition. So will be the family arthritis, which is obviously inherited. Maybe that would include any children of my line in the unforeseeable future. Of course, they would have to be born, and that is a "pre-existing" condition. More medical care will be delivered in the emergency rooms of America, and that is the most expensive health care of all.

It's nail-biting time Those of us"crazy, nasty" Trumptonians still are hoping that this all gets sorted out in the Senate but I'm very,very nervous. Bernie is the only politician who tells the truth Too bad he wasn't allowed to be the nominee He would have won IMHO This is one really, really really bad bill- a zombie-back-from-the-dead bill as Nancy Pelosi called it. I've been on a lot of different types of health care from Medicaid , to FEHB government employee insurance to 30 years on Blue Cross to ACA and now to Medicare(thank God) -one of the few things good about getting old For me, in my part of the country, ACA was awful-worse than Medicaid- because not only did no doctors take it but many hospitals didn't either. I know it's different in different regions,however, and I don't think anyone who likes their ACA should lose it I'm still hoping it all turns out good. We believed Trump when he said he would provide universal healthcare. "It;s called having a heart" he said. The real reason I crossed over and voted for Trump(although some of his rhetoric(*magnified by the media) was not good) was that whether the Dems admit it or not, their identity politics was making people hate each other,and we were headed for a civil war type situation like the French Revolution or something Split us into groups so you can divide and conquer -we don't want that anymore.

Let's be honest, the republicans are JUST AS BAD when it comes to identity politics and putting ideology before policy. Just look at the crap Paul Ryan said back then about ACA that applies now with the AHCA but he isn't saying again.

And to be even more frank: The US is still headed towards a civil war situation. That is what happens when you only have two parties that refuse to do their jobs and instead only bother themselves with getting a majority again so that they can shove out all of the changes made by the other side.A two-party system breeds animosity between the population, especially since it's such a "winner takes it all" mentality with elections. The people are pitted against each other due to that, and so they do not spend any time with holding the politicians actually accountable and are instead busy trying to "win over" the other side.

If you vote for any of the two parties, I am afraid you are falling prey to that system. The only way out for the US and the only way to avoid a worsening of that crisis is by changing the political and electoral system entirely. Otherwise, a breakdown of major proportions is inevitable.

I'd have to turn a stupid comment like "it's not our fault you got knocked up" around on that lobbyist. "So the Blue Cross is saying that all other conditions that the company covers ARE the -fault- of the company? No? Then why do you cover other conditions that "aren't your fault but refuse to cover this one?"

This is somewhat off-topic but I'm in flashback mode since receiving a letter from the people who ran the unwed mothers home I was in They were requesting a donation and sent pictures of some girls who live there with their babies for several years after they are born. I was going to send a donation with a comment like I am a graduate of that place and it is interesting how times have changed, but then I started crying and can't concentrate on anything I feel like I'm turning my son over to them again. Next week's the anniversary of my mother's death and also Mother's Day. I think it was the quote from Mother Theresa telling a story about a little boy who kept running away from her orphanage and when they followed him he was with his mother who was homeless and living under a tree. Then she said there is nothing as strong as a mother's love I wish they wouldn't send things like this to me I must be on a list somewhere.

This is how my birth mother felt when we went to visit the home she stayed in here in Los Angeles until she gave birth. When she was there, every single pregnant girl was giving up their child for adoption. When we visited, every single pregnant girl was keeping their child and being taught how to care for them. No similarities whatsoever to when she was there. That includes the staff/nuns/etc didn't shame the girls for being pregnant (now) like they did when my birth mom was there. I think it's in very bad taste and insensitive for them to still send you pictures and ask for money. Sorry

Thank you It's amazing how,even though we don't know most of the others who post here, feel the same At least now I know most of the times when I'm in that alternate universe that I am I was having trouble getting out of it and just wanted to listen to 70's music but then I heard my favorite song from the 80's and it snapped me out of it.

I remember in the 70's I changed jobs. The insurance at the new job was good, but there was a rider that they would not cover my 3-year old son for upper respiratory infection or sore throat, since he was treated for that while I was insured at my previous job with another insurance company. If he came down with that again, he would not be covered. So nasty! He was 3 years old!

And I was wheeled out of the operating room in the early 90's, since the insurance company had changed its mind about its prior approval of the surgery. They are keeping costs down, by not paying claims and not paying for medical services.

Fraud on a wide-scale basis. They mailed a payment check to a dr. of mine, to an old address that was 10 years old. My doctor said they have records of current addresses of physicians. I would call them and they would pretend that they couldn't find me in their database, and didn't know where I lived.

The insurance companies have improved only by being forced to, by the AFA. People want less regulation, but without it, this is what we have, and will have more of, without the Affordable care act. Cindy's comment was very well put.

It might be better, instead of blaming Dems or Republicans, to focus on who the real culprits are - the greedy insurance companies, who are for-profit.

Ironically, it may be three right wing senators who stop the bill. It will have to be watered down in the Senate if it is to pass. And three right-wing senators are unlikely to vote for it. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike Lee are very unlikely to support passage of anything too different from the House bill. But the House bill does not have the votes to pass the Senate as currently written.

What's wrong with our healthcare system is beyond words We've all had experiences too painful to think about and certainly to talk about As far as the nedicaid expansion part of the bill, I'm all for people having health care but just like there was a fatal flaw in the TPP law where we would have lost control of our country if it passed, there's a fatal flaw in the medicaid expansion law where if someone's fortunes change they can come back and recoup the bills-which would be fine if they were normal but the system is pure extortion-your life or your money- and a lot of times it's both. I just hope they don't give the insurance companies free rein again-they have an endless bag of tricks and the congress will get tricked by them again if they're not very careful I wish they could work bi-partisan.

A beautiful song from a Korean adoptee

From the New York Times

"Lorraine Dusky, a writer who relinquished a daughter as a young single mother in New York State in 1966, supports opening the records. She reported in her 2015 memoir that in the handful of states that offered women the opportunity to remove their names from original birth certificates, only a small fraction of women — fewer than 1 percent — chose to do so." --Don’t Keep Adopted People in the Dark by Gabrielle Glaser, June 19, 2018

Who Are We?

From the New York Times

"On FirstMotherForum.com, a blog that discusses issues among women who had given children up for adoption, Lorraine Dusky, one of the site’s authors, praised the series (ABC's 10-episode Find My Family): 'Maybe this will be heard by people who think it is unloyal somehow for a person to search out his or her roots, parents, family, when it is a most natural desire of consciousness.'--Two Reality Shows Stir Publicity and Anger"--Dec. 6, 2009.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

This blog takes cookies.

"It shouldn't take a miracle to find people you are related to by blood."--Jenn Gentlesk